Johnny Got His Gun Essay

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Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun Prose Essay Rewrite In Dalton Trumbo’s novel, Johnny Got His Gun, a close relationship between the young man and his father is characterized by a long-standing tradition of camping in the woods and fishing. However, both recognize the young man’s coming of age and while his father has every right to be upset with the son, he allows the son to leave and imparts his most treasured item. Feeling guilty, the young man takes with him the fishing tradition and morals taught by his father. Trumbo acknowledges that a son will one day have to part with his father to experience the vastness of the world for himself, despite the father’s sacrifices in raising his son. Dalton Trumbo portrays this complexity in fatherly …show more content…

The father and son are described as sitting across from one another, in front of a campfire, alone, in front of a single tent, under an enormous pine, with nothing but the “roar of the water” from the streams sounding all night long. Moreover, this tradition has continued strictly between the two of them ever since the son was seven years old to him now being fifteen years old. While there is a sense of familiarity to the tradition that the father and son both feel from annual repetition, there’s also clearly a deep appreciation of each other’s company as they are completely surrounded by nature. Furthermore, the choice of diction in “an enormous pine”, raining pine needles, “nine thousand feet high”, and “covered with pine trees and dotted with lakes” further contributes to the extreme significance of not only the tradition but also the setting, void of all other …show more content…

In doing so, he would let down his father. From the young man’s point of view, there are high stakes and guilt from betraying this tradition with his father, whom he deeply respected and loved. Moreover, the young man displays extreme consideration for his father’s feelings when he spends a long time pondering how this sudden change from both the young man and his father, previously always preferring each other’s company, “had to happen sometime” as “an end and a beginning” of a chapter in the young man’s life. What follows is a dialogue between the young man and his father without quotation marks or proper dialogue punctuation that supports the casualty in which the son spoke to his father. While the father initially hesitates, the recognition that the boy has grown up and the immense love for his son ultimately shows through any lasting reservations. The simplicity of the father’s reply “why sure go along Joe” completely contrasts the young man’s sporadic train of thought moments prior and displays both resignation and sacrificial lovingness from the

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